School Homicides – Perception vs. Reality

In recent years, school shootings have significantly ratcheted up both the fear and rhetoric about student safety. While each incident is a tremendous tragedy, the extensive media coverage of the aftermath creates additional fear and makes it seem that every student and school in America is under attack.

But, are such fears warranted, or are they simply an example of a media-driven perception bias that skew our views of the real dangers?

To put that into context, during 2010, a total of 1,934 school-aged children (5-19 years old) died from homicides in the US. And, in 2011, 2,093 school-aged children were killed (PDF). Over 1,800 of those homicides from 2010 involved children aged 15-19 years. For this group, homicide is second only to accidents as a cause of death.

More concerning might be the fact that, according to the same BJS report above, over 500,000 kids are violently victimized at school each year. Considering, though, that there are over 42 million school-aged children in the US, and that they spend 6-8 hours together a day in school, a 1% victimization rate is not that surprising.

The bottom line, however, is that the vast majority of childhood deaths occur away from school.

When we consider, for example, that in 2011 over 1,500 children died as a result of abuse or neglect, and more than 7,100 died in accidents (PDF), it’s surprising that more attention isn’t paid to the need for parenting skill training or safety training, or other similar interventions.

Every death of a child is tragic – and we should do whatever we can to protect children from harm – but we also need to respond in ways that reflect the actual risks involved, not simply based on our collective cognitive biases generated by sensationalized media reporting.

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